Right.

I have been playing this game for a really long time. The warframe forums say I started playing the 13th of September of 2015, and I have played pretty much every update religiously. I have never bought platinum and have always grinded gear fair and square, never bought prime access and only ever spent actual money in Tennogen, the independant creator's cosmetics added to the game. I have mostly all of the gear ingame except for a couple of weapons I don't care about. I have decorated dojos to look like Mordor and Skyrim, I have taken part in operations, I have seen the best and worst this game has to offer. And I have also seen the review bombing the game, which is partly justified and partly hilariously stupid. The justified part is the one that worries me. So, here is a "short" review of the game, and my worries about the future.

-Pros:
Extremely addictive, fun to play with base gameplay. Movement and shooting feel amazing and they always have ever since they implemented bullet jumping. Everyone loves using so many of the weapons in this game. The sound design makes you feel beefy while slaughtering space capitalists, discount flood and clone wars 50% off with an insane arsenal of armaments designed to fry your dopamine receptors. The art direction is weapons grade crack cocaine and you know it is, and as of recent production value in quests has skyrocketed. The reason for this is double edged, and I will explain more about this down below in the cons...
Yes the game is grindy. But that is the point of the game. New content comes out, you farm for it or outright buy it with plat, which you can farm fair and square by engaging in trading. A lot of people feel like there is too much grind due to the time investment required, but that is because of the sheer volume of more than 8 years of content in the game. It is overwhelming, and I will not get into the new player experience here because it's an extremely overdone conversation at this point.

-Cons:
Devs have a history of weird asspulls in updates, like one extremely grindy dojo research weapon requiring actual weeks of extremely hardcore farm of one singular resource for no other reason other than "lol we kinda felt like it". Getting into the game can cause a strange mix of addiction mixed with burnout, due to people being hyperfixated with a piece of gear they really want and subjecting themselves to hours of mindless repetition of admittedly outdated mission types with annoying mechanics just to get the good stuff. A lot of the super old content of this game is either in dire contrast with or atrociously mixed with the new content in a way that can only be described as jarring. Nobody actually enjoys doing low level captures cracking relics for prime parts. The only reason why people do them is because it is the most efficient way to do it. And the game does nothing to remedy this, in very central parts of the game the gameplay loop is chore nonsense with extremely fast burnout set-in only ever remedied by the dopamine hit of looking at your loot and the platinum you will make of it. Which is the reason why people are so upset certain specific loadouts were nerfed with the latest update. Yes, it's good they were nerfed. Yes, the game feels better, regardless of the tuning of weapons needed to make the nerfed gear usable, but not braindead. But the fact remains: that was the way to play Warframe, and the game encouraged this type of gameplay for a long enough amount of time to make these types of changes as controversial as they are.

-My worries:
If you didn't know, Digital Extremes was purchased by Tencent, the immense, all consuming corporate conglomerate that turns everything they touch into gacharbage. During the primed resurgence event, that greed showed it's ugly face and it took a metric ton of "you're not doing that" from the community for DE to revert the eggregious changes to plat purchases and prime access purchases...

You will see more of this in the future. Do not fool yourself.

I am cautiously optimistic about the future of the game with daddy Tencent having more money than God, but also the increase in production value comes at a cost. They are gonna look for a return on investment. And where is that gonna come from? They have been relatively quiet on new streams of revenue discussions, so maybe their newly announced IP Soulframe will be the gacha game? I can only speculate.

If you are wondering why I am giving this game a positive review, it is because of this: I love this game, flaws and all. It's a beautiful disaster of a game that has an immense amount of awesome stuff held together by spit, tape, hopes and dreams. But I've made friends playing this, I've had experiences with it and I can't rightly deny that from the game. If you take something from this, let it be this:

Enjoy the game. Do not push yourself to grind for something if you are just not feeling it. Ever. And fashionframe is the endgame.

Right. I have been playing this game for a really long time. The warframe forums say I started playing the 13th of September of 2015, and I have played pretty much every update religiously. I have never bought platinum and have always grinded gear fair and square, never bought prime access and only ever spent actual money in Tennogen, the independant creator's cosmetics added to the game. I have mostly all of the gear ingame except for a couple of weapons I don't care about. I have decorated dojos to look like Mordor and Skyrim, I have taken part in operations, I have seen the best and worst this game has to offer. And I have also seen the review bombing the game, which is partly justified and partly hilariously stupid. The justified part is the one that worries me. So, here is a "short" review of the game, and my worries about the future. -Pros: Extremely addictive, fun to play with base gameplay. Movement and shooting feel amazing and they always have ever since they implemented bullet jumping. Everyone loves using so many of the weapons in this game. The sound design makes you feel beefy while slaughtering space capitalists, discount flood and clone wars 50% off with an insane arsenal of armaments designed to fry your dopamine receptors. The art direction is weapons grade crack cocaine and you know it is, and as of recent production value in quests has skyrocketed. The reason for this is double edged, and I will explain more about this down below in the cons... Yes the game is grindy. But that is the point of the game. New content comes out, you farm for it or outright buy it with plat, which you can farm fair and square by engaging in trading. A lot of people feel like there is too much grind due to the time investment required, but that is because of the sheer volume of more than 8 years of content in the game. It is overwhelming, and I will not get into the new player experience here because it's an extremely overdone conversation at this point. -Cons: Devs have a history of weird asspulls in updates, like one extremely grindy dojo research weapon requiring actual weeks of extremely hardcore farm of one singular resource for no other reason other than "lol we kinda felt like it". Getting into the game can cause a strange mix of addiction mixed with burnout, due to people being hyperfixated with a piece of gear they really want and subjecting themselves to hours of mindless repetition of admittedly outdated mission types with annoying mechanics just to get the good stuff. A lot of the super old content of this game is either in dire contrast with or atrociously mixed with the new content in a way that can only be described as jarring. Nobody actually enjoys doing low level captures cracking relics for prime parts. The only reason why people do them is because it is the most efficient way to do it. And the game does nothing to remedy this, in very central parts of the game the gameplay loop is chore nonsense with extremely fast burnout set-in only ever remedied by the dopamine hit of looking at your loot and the platinum you will make of it. Which is the reason why people are so upset certain specific loadouts were nerfed with the latest update. Yes, it's good they were nerfed. Yes, the game feels better, regardless of the tuning of weapons needed to make the nerfed gear usable, but not braindead. But the fact remains: that was the way to play Warframe, and the game encouraged this type of gameplay for a long enough amount of time to make these types of changes as controversial as they are. -My worries: If you didn't know, Digital Extremes was purchased by Tencent, the immense, all consuming corporate conglomerate that turns everything they touch into gacharbage. During the primed resurgence event, that greed showed it's ugly face and it took a metric ton of "you're not doing that" from the community for DE to revert the eggregious changes to plat purchases and prime access purchases... You will see more of this in the future. Do not fool yourself. I am cautiously optimistic about the future of the game with daddy Tencent having more money than God, but also the increase in production value comes at a cost. They are gonna look for a return on investment. And where is that gonna come from? They have been relatively quiet on new streams of revenue discussions, so maybe their newly announced IP Soulframe will be the gacha game? I can only speculate. If you are wondering why I am giving this game a positive review, it is because of this: I love this game, flaws and all. It's a beautiful disaster of a game that has an immense amount of awesome stuff held together by spit, tape, hopes and dreams. But I've made friends playing this, I've had experiences with it and I can't rightly deny that from the game. If you take something from this, let it be this: Enjoy the game. Do not push yourself to grind for something if you are just not feeling it. Ever. And fashionframe is the endgame.